Princeton University Athletics
Thursday TigerBlog - On Nov. 13
November 13, 2025 | Tiger Blog
TigerBlog has finally figured out what day of the week it is.
Thursday, right? For some reason, he thought yesterday was Tuesday. He even posted that here. Why? He has no idea.
If he couldn't remember the day, the date is another story. Today is Nov. 13. To TigerBlog, today will forever be Digger Day.
Steve DiGregorio — Digger, to all who knew him — will forever be one of the best friends TigerBlog will ever have. Even more importantly, he will be one of the absolute best people TB has ever met.
TigerBlog knows the day that Digger was born (Feb. 17). Sadly, he also knows the day he passed away (Oct. 12, 2021).
So why is Nov. 13 special? It's because of what Digger would send to TB on this day every single year.
The two of them were huge fans of the TV show "The Odd Couple." During Digger's time as an assistant football coach at Princeton, TB would go down the balcony into his friend's office, and there would inevitably be a quote from the show from one of them within a minute or two.
If you don't remember the show, it starred Jack Klugman and Tony Randall as the legendary Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. It remains all these decades later TB's favorite comedy of all time.
What would Digger send to TB? A picture of Klugman and Randall. And why on this day?:
TB can't count the number of times in the last four years that he's been in a situation where he's wanted to use a line from the show and tell Digger about it.
"I'm an orthodontist."
"An American frog? You bet I'll fix him."
"Go, now, into the other room. Watch Sesame Street."
"That time I went to the Smithsonian. Didn't I get you a petrified spider?"
"You, sir, are an idiot."
Ah, TB could list their favorites all day. Instead, he'll just say that it's Nov. 13 and he's thinking about his dear friend, someone he misses terribly.
*
Nov. 13 of this year will also be the opening day of the Ivy League men's soccer tournament.
Princeton, the Ivy League champion, is the host and will play in the second semifinal, at 7 tonight, against No. 4 Harvard, after the first game at 3:30 between No. 2 Cornell and No. 3 Penn. The winners play Sunday at 11 am, with the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament for the winner.
Princeton does not need that automatic bid to get to the NCAA field. When the pairings are announced Monday, the Tigers know they'll be 1) in them and 2) at home. It's a good place to be at this stage of the year.
That's what happens when you've had the season Princeton has had. The Tigers are back to the No. 1 spot in the Division I RPI, after briefly dropping to No. 2. They are No. 3 in the coaches' poll this week.
They have a record of 13-1-2 and have not lost since a 1-0 loss to Hofstra in the second game of the year, back on Sept. 10.
The team, as you should know, made history this year with its run through the Ivy League, which was unprecedented. How so? Princeton went 7-0-0 and did not allow a single goal in any of those games, something no Ivy men's soccer team had ever done before.
The All-Ivy League team that were announced yesterday had a distinctly Princetonian flavor to them. Is six first-team All-Ivy selections a lot?
Daniel Ittycheria was the Ivy Offensive Player of the Year. Andrew Samuels was the Ivy Defensive Player of the Year. Those two, plus Giuliano Fravolini Whitchurch were unanimous first-team All-Ivy picks. Bardia Hormozi, Jack Jasinski and Sam Vigilante were also named to the first team.
The Princeton coaching staff of Jim Barlow, Steve Totten, Sam Maira and Tom Moffat were the Coaching Staff of the Year.
If you go back to last year, Princeton was 7-2 in its last nine games, which adds up to a 25-game run of 20-3-2. Princeton also won last year's Ivy tournament to reach the NCAA tournament, where it fell at Akron 1-0 in the first round.
Had Princeton not won the ILT last year, it would have been on the bubble. As TB said, that's not an issue this year.
It doesn't make this tournament any less of a big deal. Princeton wants to keep the roll it's on going. Cornell, No. 21 in the RPI, is almost surely in the NCAA field as well. No matter what, it'll be a fun, competitive event.
And it starts today. Nov. 13.
Digger Day.
